Still No Agreement on School Finance Debate

"I'm happy we didn't damage the schools, they opened on time and I'm sorry we were not able to come into agreement on school finance," said Steve Ogden, (R) District 5.

The second special session of the summer is now over and despite going into overtime twice, legislators are still at square one with school finance.

"There's a lot of confusion, there's a lot of frustration and all I can say is if you are frustrated, I am frustrated twice as much," he said.

Even though school finance stalled, lawmakers say the second special session was not a total waste of time. They were able to pass other important bills concerning telecom, eminent domain and pay increases for state judges.

"In lieu of the fact that we couldn't fix education, I don't think that's a justification for not doing anything else," said Ogden.

Texas law makers have been criticized for passing other bills and not coming to an agreement on school finance. But according to Ogden, those bills could get a majority vote.

"We didn't have the votes for an education reform pack," said Ogden. "But, we had the votes for other bills. The other bills were legitimate state issues that needed to be addressed and I'm glad we addressed them."

Ogden does admit he wanted to close the school finance issue just as much as his constituents.

"I'm sensitive to the criticism that, hey you went down there to fix school finance and you did everything but. But, these other things needed to be done," he said.

While it is apparent that Ogden is not at all satisfied with outcome of the session, for now everyone will have to wait for another sequel to this story.

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